ISO/IEC 27001:2022 A.5.18 — Access rights

What this control requires

Access rights to information and other associated assets shall be provisioned, reviewed, modified and removed in accordance with the organization's topic-specific policy on and rules for access control.

In plain English

Access rights to information and other associated assets shall be provisioned, reviewed, modified and removed in accordance with the organization's topic-specific policy on and rules for access control. In practice, this means you can prove you policy assets-level controls on a defined cadence.

Why it matters

ISO 27001 certification depends on showing each Annex A control is either implemented or explicitly justified for exclusion in the Statement of Applicability (SoA). Certification bodies sample controls during surveillance audits, and a missing SoA entry — or implementation that doesn't match the SoA wording — is a finding.

What an auditor looks for

An ISO 27001 lead auditor looks for: (1) an SoA entry covering the control with justification, (2) a documented procedure or policy implementing it, (3) records that prove the procedure runs (logs, tickets, training records) and (4) management-review evidence that effectiveness is monitored.

Within Organizational controls, the assessor will trace your implementation back to the catalogue reference (Annex A A.5.18) and look for objective evidence on the latest two assessment cycles.

How to implement

1. Write a short policy stating intent, scope and named owner.
2. Encode it as a platform guardrail — SCP, Azure Policy initiative, Organisation Policy, or repository policy.
3. Wire a monitoring signal that catches drift (CSPM rule, SIEM rule, scheduled query, Workspace alert) and ticket it.
4. Review on a documented cadence and capture the review in the risk register or compliance tracker.

Operational checklist

• Policy. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Information. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Management. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Access Control. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Identity. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Scope: assets, information, management, rights, access rights.

Evidence to collect

• Identity Scan. IAM / IdP exports — Entra ID, Okta, IAM Identity Center, Workspace directory — showing accounts, roles, MFA state and last sign-in.
• Infra Scan. Continuous infrastructure-posture telemetry — AWS Config, Azure Policy compliance, GCP Organisation Policy, Wiz / Prisma findings.

Identity analytics (Okta, SailPoint, Access Analyzer) demonstrates least-privilege. Focus: Access rights.

How it maps to other frameworks

Computed from shared tags, control component and key-operation subjects — handy when you are reconciling controls across an audit.

• BSI C5:2020 IDM-02 — Granting and change of user accounts and access rights
• GDPR Article 12 — Transparent information, communication and modalities for the exercise of the rights of the data subject
• CIS Controls v8 6.8 — Define and Maintain Role-Based Access Control
• NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3 3.1.22 — Publicly Accessible Content
• SOC 2 (2017 TSC) CC6.1 — Logical Access Controls

Related controls in ISO/IEC 27001:2022

• Annex A A.5.16 — Identity management
• Annex A A.5.2 — Information security roles and responsibilities
• Annex A A.5.15 — Access control
• Annex A A.8.2 — Privileged access rights
• Annex A A.5.33 — Protection of records
• Annex A A.6.1 — Screening

References

• ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27 — ISO/IEC 27001:2022
• Catalogue identifier: Annex A A.5.18

Topics: governance riskidentity accessaccess reviewidentity managementprivileged access